500 Days (79 page)

Frustrated, Witsch wrote his own email to Lieutenant Colonel Dan Baumgartner, the chief of staff for the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency, which
oversaw the SERE schools. He reiterated his objections to using SERE tactics at Guantanamo, this time more forcefully than before.

Word would get out about what they were doing, he warned, and it would get out quickly. The backlash would be immediate. Their group would be blamed and investigated when Guantanamo interrogators went too far. None of them had any idea how the information they were providing to the intelligence units was being used.

One problem, he wrote, was more important than the rest. “The physical and psychological pressures we apply in training violate national and international laws. We are only allowed to do these things based on permission from DOD management and intense oversight by numerous organizations within DOD. I hope someone is explaining this to all these folks asking for our techniques and methodology!”

Witsch said that he understood interrogators might consider the tactics “cool,” and he was not suggesting that the SERE experts remove themselves completely from the effort. But it was reckless to simply toss information about the techniques to anyone who asked.

“We must get a handle on all these people seeking information on our stuff,” he wrote. “This is getting out of control!!!”

•  •  •  

Haynes arrived late to the February 4 meeting of the interrogation working group. “Sorry, everybody,” he said as he rushed into the room. “Let’s get going.”

A draft “final report” on harsh tactics was passed around the room. Inside was a chart listing the various methods, each marked with a stoplight color. Green meant there was no reason to worry about legal ramifications. Those marked with yellow were lawful, but had problems that could not be eliminated. Red was saved for those that might be illegal or present other significant challenges.

The report concluded that thirty-six techniques could be used to different degrees without moralistic fanfare. An additional ten options, the report said, ought to be reserved for exceptional cases. These included isolation, prolonged interrogation, slapping, and other abusive techniques. Only waterboarding was marked as “red,” but the report recommended its use anyway.

Jane Dalton, the legal advisor to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, studied the chart with growing alarm. One column graded the techniques for their adherence to customary international law. In that category, all of them were marked as green; methods that any foreign body would deem illegal were now declared to be fine, because Yoo’s analysis decreed that international law had no sway in American
jurisprudence. The premise, Dalton thought, was wrongheaded and an embarrassment to national honor. It would have to be removed.

•  •  •  

In Conference Room A at the Cabinet Office Building in Whitehall, no one knew yet what was going on, but MI5 was working hard to find out.

Operatives with the British security service had picked up a swirl of intelligence that al-Qaeda terrorists were planning a massive attack at London Heathrow Airport. The information was good, but sketchy; the terrorists intended either to shoot down civilian aircraft with surface-to-air missiles, or to hijack planes and crash them into the terminals.

The February 10 meeting at Whitehall of the group—known as COBRA—had been called to weigh options for disrupting the attack. London police were already sweeping through the city, arresting suspects and anyone else linked to Islamic extremist groups. That program, the COBRA members decided, would continue. From there, they agreed to bring in the military, dispatching troops and tanks to Heathrow to serve as both a deterrent and an offensive force if the terrorists turned up. A third option, closing the airport, was raised. Blair rejected that; the British people would not accept such a drastic move unless the government turned up very specific information about a possible strike.

Blair emerged from the conference room filled with pride at the diligence of Britain’s intelligence service in uncovering the plot in time to thwart it. He could not have known that the Americans would eventually claim credit for detecting the threat to Heathrow by waterboarding a terrorist suspect—one month after the COBRA meeting.

•  •  •  

On the afternoon of February 10, Alberto Mora was walking down the hallway on the third floor of the Pentagon’s E-ring. Jim Haynes had asked him to drop by so they could discuss Mora’s thoughts about the draft report finished six days before by the working group.

Mora was not going to have any good words about it. The report was as bad as—no, worse than—he expected. Again, it made no mention of limits on questioning techniques to ensure that interrogators didn’t violate laws forbidding cruel or degrading treatment. Either the lawyers running the working group didn’t know the law, or else they didn’t care about it.

The process that led to the writing of the report was deeply flawed, Mora thought. Members of the group were allowed to voice their concerns about the proposed tactics. Then, without warning, their opinions were ignored. The Yoo
memo dictated every answer—if his analysis said a proposal was lawful, then it was recommended. And there wasn’t much that Yoo considered unlawful.

Mora had met with Yoo directly but emerged from that discussion even more convinced that the Justice Department lawyer was dangerous. He had never witnessed such unsullied arrogance. If Yoo thought something met the standards of law, well, then it did, period. Any disagreements were legal sideshows, he declared, pointless excursions into policy making. Mora decided to push Yoo’s opinion to its logical extreme and asked him if the president could lawfully order a detainee to be tortured. Yes, Yoo replied, he could.

The only hope for stopping this madness, Mora thought, was Haynes, so he was delighted when the Pentagon general counsel invited him for a chat.

Both Haynes and his principal deputy, Daniel Dell’Orto, were waiting for Mora in a conference room. “Thanks for coming, Alberto,” Haynes said. “So, I’m eager to hear your thoughts.”

“They’re very negative, Jim,” he said. “The working group was a flawed process and it did not lead to a paper that’s a quality product.”

He criticized Mary Walker, the group’s head, for ignoring dissident opinions. There were no clear standards set on how far any technique could go, and no restrictions explored on cruelty and degrading treatment.

“This shouldn’t be issued,” Mora said. “What you should do is thank Walker for her service, then stick the report in a drawer and never let it see the light of day again.”

Haynes listened, saying nothing as usual. Mora didn’t take that as a bad sign. He knew that there weren’t going to be any debates at this point.

“So, those are my thoughts, Jim,” Mora said.

Haynes paused a moment, then stood. He shook Mora’s hand. “Thanks for coming by, Alberto,” he said.

•  •  •  

On First Avenue in Manhattan, Hans Blix arrived at the building that housed the American delegation to the U.N. and was taken to the office of the ambassador, John Negroponte. It was February 11, three days before Blix was scheduled to deliver his next report to the Security Council, and he had come to the American mission to provide Condoleezza Rice with a preview of what he planned to say.

Three officials were waiting for him in Negroponte’s office—the ambassador, Rice, and John Wolf, the assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation.

Blix began with a discussion of surveillance flights. At the time of his last
report, the Iraqis were refusing to guarantee the safety of any U-2 that entered the country’s airspace, unless Blix accepted certain requirements. He had refused. Now that impasse was moot.

“It’s my understanding that they have accepted U-2 surveillance without restrictions,” he said, “and we’d like to start the flights as soon as possible.”

Overall, he said, there appeared to be more willingness among the Iraqis to cooperate actively. It was always possible that Baghdad’s seeming compliance was a delaying tactic, but he had no proof either way. The Iraqis turned over a lot of documents, none of them amounting to anything significant.

And the Security Council wasn’t providing much help. “I must say, I haven’t been terribly impressed with the intelligence provided by member states so far,” he said.

“That’s the nature of intelligence,” Rice replied. “It goes stale very quickly. We’re not withholding any intelligence, but that information is no substitute for what Iraq needed to do voluntarily.”

Blix had to remember, she said, that American intelligence wasn’t on trial; Saddam Hussein was.

Neither Blix nor Rice knew the magnitude of the American intelligence community’s failure to assist the U.N. inspection effort. The agencies had identified 105 sites that were the most probable hiding places for weapons of mass destruction. Despite public proclamations by Tenet and other top intelligence officials that all of this information had been shared with Blix, it had not; twenty-nine of those locations—about 30 percent—had been withheld.

Still, Rice insisted, Saddam was compelled to disclose his weapons, whether the U.N. team could find them or not. “The aim of Resolution 1441 was to force Iraq to make a strategic decision to disarm,” she said, “but he’s still playing a process game. He can’t be allowed to get away with that.”

Saddam was undermining the credibility of the Security Council, she said, and yet the international body was showing a weakening resolve to enforce its own resolutions. The United States was not going to stand by and endlessly tolerate wavering.

“This issue is quickly coming to an end,” she said.

•  •  •  

Shortly before noon on February 17, a young police officer on a motor scooter parked at Piazza Maciachini in Milan. He began to lock his bike when a dark Volkswagen zipped up behind him. The driver opened his window.

“I’m Bob’s friend,” he called out in perfect Italian. “Get in!”

The officer, Luciano Pironi from the Carabinieri, felt a rush of excitement. This nameless, fortysomething man worked with Bob Lady, the CIA officer who had told Pironi in August about the agency’s plan to kidnap a resident of Milan. Lady had agreed to give Pironi a role in the operation, and now, after weeks of practice, the day for the abduction had finally arrived.

Pironi climbed into the passenger seat, and the car took off. The two men barely spoke. After a few minutes, they reached a side street called Via Bonomi and came to a stop just before the intersection with Via Guerzoni.

For several minutes, the two men remained still and silent. The driver’s mobile phone rang. On the line was Lady, letting him know that their subject, Abu Omar, was on the move.

“Yes, all right,” the driver replied.

He started the car and drove to the intersection of Via Guerzoni and Via Davanzati. Then, they watched.

•  •  •  

The heavyset, bearded man was walking briskly down Via Ciaia, coming from Piazza Dergano. He arrived at Via Guerzoni. Ahead of him, a Volkswagen sat in the intersection.

•  •  •  

There he was. Pironi and the driver saw Abu Omar.

“You’re going to have to stop him near the white van parked over there, on Via Guerzoni,” the driver said, pointing at the vehicle.

“All right.”

A telephone rang. It was the Samsung cell phone that Lady had given to Pironi for the operation.

“Don’t answer that,” the driver said.

Pironi nodded and removed the battery from the phone.

The driver turned the key and headed down Via Guerzoni toward Abu Omar. He came to a stop and Pironi got out, standing in the middle of the road as the target approached.

“Sir!” Pironi called out in Italian, flashing his badge. “Let me see your papers.”

Abu Omar looked perplexed. “I don’t speak Italian,” he said in English.

Pironi switched languages. “All right,” he said. “Let me see your passport.”

He told Abu Omar to follow him and they edged toward the back of the white van. His suspect produced a residency card and his passport. Pironi studied them as he waited for someone to leap out of the van.

Seconds ticked by, and nothing happened. Pironi felt nervous; he could stare at these documents only so long before raising suspicions. He took out his phone, hoping Abu Omar didn’t notice that it had no power. He pretended to make a call to run a check on the papers.

The van’s front right-hand side door opened, and a man leaned out, facing Pironi. “What are you doing?” the man yelled.

Both Pironi and Abu Omar jumped back, startled by the shouting. Two sets of arms reached out from the van and grabbed Abu Omar, whisking him inside and throwing him to the floor. The door clattered shut, the engine roared, and the van made a rapid U-turn before racing away.

Pironi remained standing in the street, openmouthed and still holding Abu Omar’s papers.

•  •  •  

The presentation by Blix to the Security Council that same day had a little bit for everyone, with a glass half-full, glass half-empty theme. That proved to be the problem.

There was no specific evidence of any weapons violations, and the Iraqis were beginning to show real signs of cooperation, Blix said. On the other hand, the inspectors had located some prohibited missiles and engines, and Baghdad had failed to account for a range of other material.

Still, there should not be a rush to judgment. The Americans had been marshaling data that they contended established the existence of illegal Iraqi arms programs, but Blix found their case weak.

“Inspectors, for their part, must base their reports only on evidence, which they can, themselves, examine and present publicly,” he said. “Without evidence, confidence cannot arise.”

ElBaradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency delivered the second report on possible nuclear programs, and his findings were more conclusive than Blix’s. His agency had neutralized Iraq’s past nuclear program by 1998, he said, leaving no unresolved disarmament issues.

“Hence, our focus since the resumption of our inspections in Iraq, two and a half months ago, has been verifying whether Iraq revived its nuclear program in the intervening years,” he said. “We have to date found no evidence of ongoing prohibited nuclear or nuclear-related activities in Iraq.”